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I came across a nice blog entry on the relevance of email archiving to small businesses. Email archiving has traditionally been seen as an area of relevance only to big enterprises which need to comply with a variety of government regulations. This attitude is justified to an extent, since email archiving software of yesteryear were so expensive, and involved setting up servers and specialized software, that hey certainly were not a priority in small business tech needs. However, like many other software areas, the cloud approach has made email archiving available to small businesses for a low monthly fees. Now it is worth considering the benefits, if any, for small businesses. The following benefits may compel small businesses to consider hosted email archiving. 1. Email Security. Email contains the most important business assets of businesses including communications, contracts, agreements, proposals, or other important business information. Unfortunately, this information is scattered over multiple mailboxes of current or past employees, and ransom to mailboxes crashing (which they do all the time). Email archiving lets companies consolidate all company email in a centralized repository and conduct searches across mailboxes to find the right information. Companies which want to secure, backup and consolidate the knowledge assets contained in email inboxes will find this to be a compelling reason. 2. Email Discovery. Email Discovery relates to finding the right information inside company mailboxes in response to a demand for specific information in litigation, an internal inquiry or managers and workers looking for some important business information. Email discovery costs can run into thousands of dollars if companies have no easy and direct way of discovering information across email folders. Companies which want to be proactively prepared for these situations will find email archiving to be a compelling proposition. 3. Email Compliance. Acts like Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC, National Association of Securities Dealers and a variety of others, require companies to secure electronic information, including email, for prolonged periods. Although every company does not fall under the purview of these Acts, a large number of companies do. With increasing regulatory stringency and Acts being passed and modified all the time, it is very hard to tell if you are covered or not. Email archiving lets companies store and index all company information for indefinite periods, and companies which want to be prepared for regulatory requests will find this to be a good reason to commit. Â
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